What is LOVE, Dr. Cookerly?: loving

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Multiple Sex Partners and Love

With dismay in his voice Vince blurted out, “Doesn’t everyone feel awful if their main squeeze has sex with someone else?

“Isn’t it natural to feel jealous or bad or something terrible if you really love someone? So what’s wrong with me and my wife? When I found out she had sex with a guy on a cruise she went on with her girlfriends it just turned me on. That night, after she told me, we had the greatest sex ever! Now she says she wants me to have sex with her friend, Sheila — so we’re even. Are we both crazy?”

Vince’s bewilderment and similar variations of his confusing situation are not all that uncommon in my couples counseling practice. The truth is no small number of couples who really do love each other get quite sexually aroused about their spouse having sex with someone else before, during or after it happens, or in fantasy. Others keep circulating around a confusing mix of strongly opposing feelings and thoughts, while still others begin in agony only to later embraced and enjoy the very sexual behaviors they were first shocked and horrified by.

Another group seems to like it at first but not later. For most people raised in a culture that condemns this sort of thing and promotes sexual monogamy as ‘the only way to go’ dealing with this issue usually is excruciating. A great many breakdowns and breakups, along with all sorts of life chaos are the more usual experiences. Even suicide and/or murder sometimes are known to happen when a spouse or love mate has had sex outside their primary relationship.

What some people find strange is the fact that an increasing majority of couples in the developed world don’t break up or breakdown when one or both of them has sex outside their relationship. That doesn’t mean it is easy for all these couples to sort out. Some find it a relatively important but still a lesser significant event in their lives, while no small number of others actually enjoy what is so devastating to others. A surprising minority report that sex with others is actually good for their primary union, which is so totally opposite to what the majority of Western world couples experience.

What makes the difference between couples who are destroyed, couples who struggle through it and stay together, couples who take it in stride and are not much affected, and couples who enjoy and look forward to having multiple sex partners in their lives? Before we go after answers let’s get a little perspective and some background.

Down through the ages men and women have lived rather successfully with all sorts of different standards regarding sex. In all civilizations there have existed sexual standards which have at times included sanctioned and socially honored paramours, inamoratos, concubines, temporary travel spouses, concurrent secondary and tertiary husbands and wives, polygamist mates, and especially for the rich and the Royals various high status official positions for extramarital lovers of all sexual persuasions. There also have existed official holidays from monogamy, religious ceremonies involving sex with priests and nuns, sanctioned orgies, broadly approved of incestuous assignments and a whole lot more you didn’t get to hear about in World History 101. All major religions and major cultures have had extramarital, multi-person sex accepted and approved of in their history at times and in certain circumstances.

It is to be noted that traditionally matrilineal societies have had a whole lot less trouble with sex outside marriage than have patrilineal societies. Also in quite a few male dominant, agrarian societies having multi-person sex partners has been much more OK for males and often not at all OK for females. However, in certain hunter/gatherer tribes where male/female equality is greater, having multi-person sex outside a pair bond relationship, for both males and females, has been and in some areas still is highly approved of and is the norm.

Today around the world people in different cultures and societies react very differently concerning having multiple sex partners outside of pair bonded relationships. In some tribal cultures to refuse to have sex with a visitor or an important personage could be grounds for divorce and it might even get a person thrown out of the village. In other cultural groups multi-person sex can condemn a female to so called “honor murder” possibly by beheading or stoning. In contrast there are, and have been, sub-societies where the more people a woman has sex with the higher her social standing and desirability. And there have been the rare religious groups where even monogamous, marital sex has been deemed evil and equal to the sin of sex outside of marriage for both men and women.

You might say, “But all that’s ancient history”. Not so. In reviewing our current so-called civilized world I have seen a poll which showed that 67% of young, modern adult Peruvian women think sex with someone other than a spouse is quite justifiable. This number falls to 59% for young adult Brazilian women, and 50% among female Argentinians under 35 years of age. In a somewhat similar poll the UK number was 28% and the USA number was 38%, with various countries in the EU registering numbers similar to the South Americans. Urban dwellers in China score similar to the Peruvian women but measurements in rural China result in scores more similar to the English.

Modern world customs vary greatly in regard to multiple sex partners. The French have their custom of ‘separate vacations’ allowing for sex with another, and the Germans have Oktoberfest during which extra marital sex is not grounds for divorce. There is research that shows every year more married people have sex with someone other than their spouse, but the percentage of people divorcing because of infidelity continues to decline. Other research suggests that an increasing number of couples are jointly agreeing to engage in sex with other couples or a third-party. An increasing number of prostitutes offer their services to couples. Swingers’ clubs exclusively for couples are on the increase, and polyamore relationships where couples work to both grow and share real love along with sex with others are receiving increased attention.

No one is sure how many couples engage in Internet sex with others, or phone sex, or Second Life avatar sex, and the debate rages about whether or not any of that is adulterous. Sexual robots and three-dimensional cyber sex with electrodes to provide the physical sensations are in the works, and meanwhile couples rent and buy more explicit, erotic videos than do single individuals, and married women are the primary purchasers of sexual fantasy and erotic romance books according to some researchers. There’s a lot going on out there, and knowledge usually serves us better than ignorance.

So, with all that in mind let’s get back to what Vince asked. “Doesn’t everyone feel awful if their main squeeze has sex with someone else?” The answer obviously is “no” and reactions actually are quite varied. I want to acknowledge that many are deeply hurt in these situations, I see them in my practice and help them through very painful emotions. However, in this entry I want to relate that there are other responses that couples have. There is a minority in our culture who are erotically aroused and generally quite positive, others are only moderately disturbed, while some actually are fairly indifferent about the whole thing. This probably means your reaction to your mate having sex with someone else is probably not genetic or biologically ‘natural’ and ‘universal’, as some have argued. That’s good news because it also means that with work (psychological, ethical, relational, etc. work) you have emotional and behavioral choice.

Let’s look at the love factor for those who do get hurt because their spouse, or committed lover, had sex with someone else. There are those who argue that the more healthy, real, broad love you have the less you will see a spouse having sex with someone else as ‘vitally’ important. Therefore, the more you both have real love for each other the more you will be able to successfully stay together, even when great hurt and disturbance occurs. A supporting thesis goes like this. Only those who are markedly insecure and inadequate at both love and sex have to break up over a mate having sex with someone else. This might be because they can’t tolerate the idea that someone else might be better than they are at both love and/or sex. Secretly they suspect they themselves are inadequate and other people will outperform them. About that they are profoundly but secretly ashamed. The truly loving and self secure do not breakup or break down, they work it through with and for love. At least that’s some of the theory posited for this complicated issue.

We also must look at the healthy self-love factor. With enough healthy self-love and healing love for a spouse forgiveness, healing and relational improvement becomes more possible. Splitting up over anything sexual acts to make sex more important than love, and indicates it is likely self-love is deficient. Some religious leaders have taught that successfully staying together after infidelity is a special application of the great admonition “love others as you love yourself”. It seems like more and more couples are coming to new psychosexual understandings and with those understandings are working toward staying together. They do that with growing love for themselves and for each other. Also they jointly work against the common, cultural training to divorce over ‘going sexually astray’. This cultural training makes sex so incredibly important that it can, and by these societal standards, should outweigh healthy, real love. Fortunately for many couples, children and families real love often does prevail, and the problems our culture gives us concerning multiple sex partners are overcome and defeated.

It must be fully recognized that millions have been heavily programmed to give sex great importance, and some argue far more importance than it logically deserves. This is especially true for those living in the modern world where the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy can be responsibly guarded against. It also must be fully recognized that how much one hurts in a multi-person sexual situation may be heavily influenced by how one has been subconsciously programmed to feel and think about sex with someone other than a primary mate. How one has been programmed to behave about all this also is of great import. Acts against one’s self or against others almost always are counterproductive and they often negate the healing power of love.

Healthy, real love is protective (see the entry “A Functional Definition of Love") so those acting from healthy, real love take appropriate precautions for both sexual and emotional health. All persons in a multi-person sexual involvement are best treated with love, in fact the more love the better because that will produce the most health and healing when needed. Love between all participants also will assist in the healthiest resolution of difficulties. Making an enemy of one person usually just makes everything take longer and be much more difficult.

For the hurting couple grappling with their many difficult emotions here are a number of things to look at so that healing can occur. Everyone’s sexual background programming and beliefs, along with each person’s own sexual experience history, along with everyone’s religious training are well worth examining – but examining with love and with a loving attitude. The trick is to be very love-oriented and to combine that with being extremely truthful. It is love-centeredness mixed with truth that wins the day for most couples and for anyone else involved. Healing self-love, mate love and love for all concerned is the medicine that makes the difference.

Truth with love can defeat the problems while deception, lies, half lies and attempts at manipulation just make everything worse in the long run. Being not love-centered but fear-centered, or centered in authoritarian/judgmental controlling, or in victimhood, revenge, self-pity, judgmentalism or anything else can prevent love and truth from doing their healing work. Blame, accusation, condemnation, rage and other negativity aimed at yourself or others just helps you get a negative outcome. Be as loving as you can be to yourself and all concerned, be as truthful as you can to yourself and all concerned and you are much more likely to come out better than before.

Again and again that is the result I see in counseling with people dealing with these difficulties. I have worked with hundreds of couples hurting, struggling and battling their way through these issues. Those who do love mixed with truth are the ones who come out OK and often even better than they were. Seek the help of a loving, nonjudgmental counselor or therapist who only ‘takes the side of healthy resolution for all concerned’ and your journey to well-being will be both better and quicker. At least that is my experience and the experience of those therapists and counselors I have supervised.

Now, let’s look at the love factor for those who don’t get markedly hurt, upset, etc. about their love mate having sex with someone else. Swingers, polyamores, sex sharers, sex surrogates, erotic communalists, cyber sex aficionados and everyone else engaging in some form of sexuality with multiple people who really do a good job of showing their love-mate lots of healthy, real love usually are the ones who do best.

The general guideline is ‘do lots of love toward everybody involved’ or trouble will probably start and grow. Lots of truthfulness mixed with lots of love actions keep sex with each other more emotionally safe and nonthreatening. The couples who are less loving, less truthful and generally less successful at life tend to fail at having multiple sex partners in their lives. At least, in my counseling and consulting practice that’s what I have seen. Healthy self-love, mate love, reliance on truth, plus self-disclosure love and protective love (both physical and emotional) help toward a good prognosis. Anything less loving is likely to be much more problematic.

As in so many things those who do best at multi-person sexuality are those who are highly loving of self and others.

Again, the aim of this entry is to inform about diversity in the human condition. What we may have been taught is usual, normal, regular, etc. may be different for others, may be changing, and may have much more variation. What I promote is not a particular relational style but rather health and love in all things.

As always, Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
How do you know the ways you think about love and sex are not just the result of your family’s and your society’s programming and not necessarily about what is natural or best for you?

Is Feeling Love, Love Itself?

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with a review of some of the many troubling contradictions and confusions that exist about whether feeling love is a feeling or not; the lesson then posits a clarifying and for some a contentious answer to the beginning question; more.

Contradictions And Confusions

“I’m totally baffled! I don’t know what to believe. Most of my friends seem to think that love is an emotion but some strongly disagree. A teacher I respect says that true love is only the feeling of joyful compassion that leads to lifelong commitment and connection. One book I read said love is a wonderful emotion but like all emotions it is temporary and fading and, therefore, untrustworthy and relatively unimportant. Others say love is a mysterious, emotional power that makes the world go-round, and others suggest that feeling love is just part of the mating drive, while still to others love is just an insignificant but strong feeling you get when you play the ‘game of romance’.

I hear supposed experts saying things like love feelings lead to a parasitic, addictive dependency, best avoided or escaped. I also read love is a powerful, vital, natural, long-lasting and, once started, love is an ongoing psychoneurological process which mostly happens in the unconscious limbic system of the brain. That thought takes some contemplation. I understand that some historians suggest romantic love feelings were, in a sense, artificially invented and continued by Western world culture, starting with the French royals in the 12th century. But I also understand that animals probably feel love because their neurochemical, neurophysiological and neuro-electrical responses have been found to be the same as humans when they are behaving in ways thought to represent love occurring.

To make matters even more complicated my religion teaches me things like “God is love”, “love is everlasting”, “all true love (including couple’s love) comes from and is a manifestation of the Deity’s love”and consequently to think that love is merely an emotion, especially a temporary emotion, can be seen as sinful and heretical.” All those statements originated from a foreign graduate student, working hard to develop a cross-cultural, core understanding of this thing we call love.

So what do you think? Have you been taught, or led to believe, that feeling love is love itself? Is love an emotion? If love is an emotion is it impermanent, temporary, unstable and undependable or even fleeting and fickle? Is love only an emotion and, therefore, is not of much lasting importance?

The Perception of Love

One of the more common, perceptual mistakes people make is to confuse the perception of something internal with the thing itself. If I feel rumblings in my stomach I may be sensing my digestive system functioning. But the sensing of it is not to be confused with digestion itself. In fact, my digestion mostly goes on without me being consciously aware of it – the natural process of love may work that way too. So, feeling love may be seen as occasionally accessing, or becoming aware of, an inner, ongoing, natural process which may always be there inside us once we truly love.

This understanding goes well with people who say things like “I know that I always love my child (children, spouse, family member or whoever they love)” but I don’t always feel that love”. It also is in accord with people who automatically and powerfully act to protect those they love in the split second of sensing that a loved one is in danger. Actions to save acquaintances and strangers tend to be much slower and less likely. Does not the quick action to save a loved one tell us that the love is already there inside us and is ready to automatically motivate us to be protective. Also the tendency to risk one’s own life to rescue loved ones is not only far quicker but is far stronger than the tendency risk one’s own life rescuing others we do not love.

Another ‘evidence’ of love having an inner, ongoing and consistent component instead of being a fleeting and/or fading feeling can be seen in this example. John got up from a brief nap grumbling and griping about how hard it was to go to his second job. Later at that job a fellow worker asked him why he took and continued to hold this second job because it was so obvious that it was hard on John. John answered, “I do it to help pay my daughter’s college costs, and I do that simply because I dearly love her.”

Now, examine John’s statement. John is experiencing other emotions than the nice, warm, happy feelings often associated with feeling love. In fact, with his griping and grumbling he might be seen as feeling anti-love feelings. However, John’s negative feelings can be seen as somewhat shallow. Underlying them is a far deeper, pervasive, consistent and powerful process of love which keeps motivating John to do his love-motivated actions year after year.

Accessing Love

It seems that once love is solidly established, the people who truly love always can be aware of that love; they can access it, be motivated by it and bring forth actions that demonstrate it. Sometimes this is associated with having the feelings, or emotions, that go with the word love, and sometimes not as is evidenced in John’s example above. Whether it is felt or not, it is there. There are countless millions of other examples, especially among people who have had long-term love relationships in which hardship or strong challenge has been faced because of their ongoing love. In sickness and in health, in adversity and stress, in deprivation and defeat, love prevails as nothing else can. If love were but a temporary emotion it would not be consistently accessible and available for motivating the great and heroic acts it does, indeed, motivate.

Love Labeling

If someone strongly and sincerely says they love you, it would seem that perhaps they have gotten in touch with a strong, natural, inner process which may continue throughout life and actually may produce a great many other emotions along with many thoughts and life-changing actions. It is reasonable to think that it takes a lot more than a mere, temporary emotion to achieve all that.

It is true that a person saying they love you may have what can be called varying and various love feelings for you, along with that love, but there is far more to love than just those feelings. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say “I am feeling loving toward you, or for you”. Perhaps it also would be accurate for someone to say “I’m feeling loved” rather than the perfunctory “I love you too” response. After a time, two people in a love relationship may have the emotion of feeling lovable. Feeling lovable, loving and loved are all probably reasonable labels for emotions that flow out of love itself. Those feelings may come and go but the love that underlies them is probably most accurately understood as stable, dependable and consistently present, not temporary.

Evidence That Love Is More Than Emotion

Another source of evidence pointing to love being something other than just emotion comes from the research into love’s physically healing effects. Along with that is the research that shows the lack of love, or the absence of behaviors that convey love, can result in failure to thrive illnesses, psychosocial dwarfism, heightened susceptibility to disease and other physiological maladies. Serious depression and anxiety conditions also are associated with people who insufficiently receive the behaviors that convey love. Then there are the amazing incidents of the presence of a loved one having healthful effects on people in deep, comatose states. There also is accumulating evidence in the brain sciences pointing to love being a deep, usually unconscious, vital, powerful, natural process.

Research in systemic and interactional variables having to do with how two or more people, or animals, interrelate and what that interrelating does to their biological functioning, also shows interesting results concerning love. Some researchers think they have evidence which suggests that two people, or two animals, who are in what can be called ‘a love bonded relationships’ sometimes exhibit very harmonious neuro-electrical and neurochemical synchronicity which apparently does not occur in non-love bonded pairs. Lovers, parents and children, brothers and sisters, twins and others are thought to also sometimes exhibit this phenomenon. Is that evidence of love at the neurophysiological level? Some people think it is. Much more research on this has yet to be done.

Research in comparative animal psychology, social psychology, anthropology, pediatric psychiatry, and even behavioral economics tends to correlate with what the brain sciences have been finding concerning love. Behaviors that bring about ongoing, close, caring connection, nurturing, protectiveness and healthfulness are all associated with the neurochemistry that seems to be a part of love responses, and love relationships in humans and higher order primates, as well as other members of the animal kingdom.

The Answer

The answer to the question “Is feeling love, love itself?” is no! The preponderance of available evidence from many sources points to love being far more than just a feeling. It also suggests that when we feel love for someone, an animal or anything else, we actually are just becoming aware of an inner process which is natural, powerful and vital to full, healthful functioning. That process, the evidence also suggests, is something ongoing within us whether we consciously are aware of it, or not.

Therefore, it is sensible to conclude: Love is so much more than a feeling or an emotion.Feeling love is just a sensing of a much greater thing.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Who do you know you love, whether you feel that or not at this moment?

Lasting Sex and Lasting Love

Did you know that to keep having good sex in an ongoing, couple’s relationship it almost always takes having ongoing, healthy, real love actively and frequently demonstrated? It seems people can have good sex, on a short-term basis, without healthy, real love but not in a long-lasting, ongoing, romantic or spousal love relationship.

Did you know that healthy self-love probably needs to be a part of this mix also? Without healthy self-love couple love may not flourish. Without sufficient self and couple healthy, real love flourishing a couple’s sex life is likely to fade over time. So, to have a great, ongoing, couple’s sex life it likely will take having a good, healthy, ongoing love of self and a good, healthy, ongoing couple’s love frequently and actively demonstrated. That is what I have found and other counselors and therapists like me have concluded after many years of practice working with the sex and love lives of a great many couples.

Naturally it is important not to confuse ‘sex’ and ‘love’ as, unfortunately, so many people do (See entry “Making Love or Having Sex” and explore “The Love Definition Series” in the left column). Confusing love and sex leads many people to relational disasters. To really weave sex and love together healthfully it is important to know how extremely different they are from one another. Learning the different characteristics of healthy sexuality and healthy love can greatly assist individuals and couples to do both well, and to do a good job of weaving them together. If you confuse love and sex or suspect your beloved does I suggest you both had better work on that. If you think that your maturing children may confuse love and sex you might want to attend a bit more to their love and sex education. It also can help to talk with close friends about de-confusing love and sex.

A good, healthy sex life usually means one in which a couple has sex fairly frequently and every so often differs the style, place, time, etc. of their sexual experience. Differences in sexual behavior are not the only important kind of difference to consider. Many couples find that differences in mood or attitude can be the most important differences to consider when aiming to have lasting sex with lasting love.

To have lasting loving sex it helps if you consider all the many mood options available. Sex in which the shared moods include being romantic, naughty, daring, sweet, silly, primitive, crazy, wondrous, adventurous, passionate, nasty, lazy, wild, sacred, mysterious, kinky, base, abandoned, playful, tender and a host of other mood possibilities is highly desirable. Working to enact these various mood options is frequently far more important than simple, sexual intercourse position options or different methods by which orgasm is achieved.

Frequency of sexuality issues also is important and can vary greatly from one person to the other and from one couple to another. In addition it is important to consider the frequency of all sexual interactions, not just sexual intercourse. Erotic kissing, sexy talk, sexually flirtatious behavior and a host of other sexual interactions that do not lead to intercourse and orgasm but rather stand on their own as desirable events help spice up life and have independent value for a couple’s lasting love life. Quality is more important than quantity but there are too many couples who do not have frequent enough sexual interactions, including intercourse.

There also are a very small number of couples who have sex too often, but from a health professional’s point of view too much sex is a rarer problem than too little sex. If you have sex so often that you become very raw, bleed a lot, miss work or otherwise malfunction at regular life activities you might be having too much sex. Since sex is highly healthy in all sorts of different ways, and it gets even far more healthy when it’s mixed with love, having loving sex frequently is a very healthy thing to do biologically and psychologically. It also may help socially because there is evidence suggesting well sexed and well loved people are easier to get along with and possibly are more interested and active in constructive, social concerns.

In regard to the frequency of orgasms, having between one and three a week, depending on the individual and physical ability or disability, is often regarded as a good regimen for accessing accompanying health benefits. Perhaps you have heard “a climax a day keeps the physician away”. Oh, you thought it was an “apple” a day? Was it the Victorians or the apple industry that changed it?

In any case, the ‘climax a day’ works for quite a few people while there are others who seem do well with only once a month. Less than that is highly questionable. If each orgasm is accompanied with a dose of healthy self-love, with other love and/or love of life and the universe it is likely to be extra healthy. If orgasms are accompanied with guilt, shame, embarrassment, thoughts or actions that self-denigrate or demean another, with anger, depression, anxiety, or other negative emotions the experience is likely to result in poorer mental and emotional health and be damaging to a couple’s relational health, which also goes against having a good, lengthy love and sex relationship.

Lasting love is greatly assisted by knowing the different ways love can be conveyed and then mixing those ways into your sexuality. Research has discovered that there are eight distinct groups of behavior which convey love directly, and four others which transmit love indirectly. I egotistically will say the best thing you can read about the eight direct ways of conveying or giving love is to be found in Part Two of my book, Recovering Love, chapters 5, 6 and 7. Chapter 8 is about integrating those ways into your sex life and is titled “How Do We Get the Sex Life We Both Want”.

If you want to be a lasting, loving couple with a lasting, full sex life then it is important to study and practice the major ways love is done as you also experiment and explore sexuality together and it’s never ending variety. There are so many ways to be sexual you can never get around to them all. You will have your favorites which you can keep going back to but I suggest every once in awhile experiment with something new.

Now, let’s look at healthy self-love and some of its particulars. Healthy self-love is extremely helpful to lots of couples in lots of ways, and this is especially true when it comes to sexuality. The same ways you show love to another can provide you with the ways to show love to yourself. Healthy self-love actions of affirming, protecting, nurturing, gifting and working to lovingly interconnect and harmonize the parts of your psychological self provide examples. To know more about this you can explore this website looking at the various entries that have to do with communicating love and other entries concerning sex with love issues.

Healthy, real couple’s love usually is greatly complemented and made lasting when couples continue throughout their life together to study love and explore sexuality further. Generally speaking, the more a couple maintains a fairly high level of varying sexuality and at the same time the more a couple works at being purposefully love-active the more lasting, healthy and happy that couple will be. However, it takes some good, couple’s teamwork to accomplish that. If you have trouble with any of these ideas and suggestions you might want to seek an accomplished, love-oriented, couple’s therapists who is trained, experienced and credentialed in both couple’s and sex therapy.

For a lasting, love-filled, erotic, couple’s life together here are a dozen simple questions you and your beloved might want to consider working with.

1. Do we lovingly talk about sex together?
Lovingly means to talk with kindness, care, understanding, acceptance, and staying open to each other’s feelings and ideas, while not letting egotism, fear, inhibitions, judgmentalism or defensiveness have influence, and never talking in ways that could be interpreted as disrespectful, demeaning, degrading, making fun of, or angrily argumentative.

2. Do we lovingly ask for what we want sexually, and lovingly hear what our beloved wants?

3. Do we lovingly handle a hesitancy, reluctance, or our beloved not wanting what we want?

4. Do we lovingly handle our beloved wanting something very different from what we want sexually?

5. Do we want to lovingly share our erotic selves with one another, and lovingly participate with our beloved sharing their erotic ways with us?

6. Are we lovingly open to experimenting and exploring new and different ways to be sexual with one another?

7. If one or both of us gets erotically carried away and into intense, extreme or wild abandon sex is there still a sense of love pervading our experience?

8. Are our beloved’s sexual emotional wants, well-being and satisfaction consistently treated as lovingly important as our own?

9. When we experience sexual difficulty do we handle those difficulties with lots of self disclosure, truth and love?

10. Do we lovingly work to help each other get past restrictive sexual inhibitions, bad previous sexual experiences, anti-sexual training and subconscious programming, sexual ignorance and sexual inexperience?

11. Do we lovingly help each other share the fun, excitement, silliness, joy, playfulness, pride and ecstasy of sexuality together?

12. Do we, at least sometimes, lovingly together strive to grow and experience sexualities that are of spiritual, oceanic, metaphysical and cosmic dimensions?

Couples who can affirmatively respond to most the above questions I see as highly likely to have a lasting, growing and frequently enriched sex and love-filled life together.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
Is your all over attitude about sexuality more of a loving, happy, affirmative, thankful it exists attitude, or a conflicted, contradictory and confused attitude, or an aggressive, competitive, loveless attitude, or a mostly emotionally bad feeling, negative attitude? Then, how do you think your all over attitude about sexuality affects your love relationships, including the one you have with yourself?

Self-Love and Its Five Healthy Functions

Synopsis: Self-love dynamics and importance; the five functions via healthy self-love; living with and without functioning healthy self-love; a healthy self-love self exam.

Consider this understanding of how ‘healthy self-love’ and the ‘five major functions of all forms of love’ work, how it has great importance and how it is something you will do well to know about.

Dynamics and Importance

Healthy, real love serves us and drives us by way of love’s five major functions. This is true of all types of love including healthy self-love.

Knowing the five major functions of healthy, real love and how to apply them in healthy self-love development can greatly assist a person in growing their healthy self-love. That can amazingly and significantly assists people in succeeding at all other types of love relationships.

How well couple’s love, family love, friendship love and a great many other kinds of love flourish or perish often depends on sufficient healthy self-love. The greater one’s healthy self-love the less one tends to operate from fear, insecurity, jealousy, anger, deception and a host of other positions that tend to destroy love relationships. Greater healthy self-love also results in the development of greater self-confidence, self-reliance, self-esteem, self-understanding, self-directed living, self-trust, self-assurance and self-sufficiency. All those strongly tend to lead to greater success in all areas of life. Therefore, I vigorously recommend developing a really good understanding of the major functions of love and what they accomplish when applied to healthy, self-love growth and improvement.

Self-Love and the Five Major Functions of Healthy Real Love

1. Connection
    It is by love that we are best connected to one another.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we are best connected with our self.

2. Nurturing
    It is by love that we best nurture the growth and well-being of each other.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best nurture the growth and well-being of our self.

3. Protection
    It is by love that we protect and safeguard our loved ones.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we protect and safeguard our self.

4. Healing
    It is by love that we strive to heal our loved ones when they become afflicted.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best strive to heal our self.

5. Reward
    It is by love that we best take joy in one another and reward one another.
It is by ‘healthy self-love’ that we best take joy in and reward our self.
So, in these ways let us adhere to the ancient admonition – love others as you love yourself.

Rewards, Survival and Well-Being

Joy (part of the fifth function listed above) rewards and reinforces the actions that stem from the previous four functions.

Each of the functions of love works for our survival, well-being and improvement. Therefore, our healthy self-love works for our individual survival, well-being and improvement. This in turn works to keep us going and, therefore, can greatly aid us in acting on behalf of the survival, well-being and improvement of those we love.

Loveless Malfunction

Without love and the functions it provides we malfunction. When we malfunction we deprive both our self and those we love of the benefits that flow from our love. Think about each of the five functions not occurring. When we are not well-connected with our self we tend to live in inner disharmony and often work against our self. When we do not nurture our self we grow overly dependent on others and may psychosocially starve. When we are not sufficiently self-protective we live increasingly in danger of being harmed.

When we do not sufficiently act to heal our self when afflicted psychologically and physically we promote our own dysfunction and demise. When we do not sufficiently take in, digest and revel in the rewarding joys of love we do not reinforce the actions that stem from the first four functions of love and, thus, they go unrewarded. Unrewarded behavior tends to diminish and disappear. From the diminishment and cessation of love actions everyone may then suffer.

Greater Self-Love : Better Everything

The better one’s healthy self-love the better the five functions of love tend to operate keeping the self strong, healthy and, therefore, more able to love others. The better one’s healthy self-love the better one can operate when other sources of love are not available. The better one’s healthy self-love the more one is likely to attract strong, healthy love from strong, healthy others. It is true that dependent, needy, weak people also may be attracted hoping that your love and strength will aid (save, rescue, fix and/or ‘adopt’) them. So, out of love for others one may be healthfully assistive to the weak and needy but only if out of healthy self-love one avoids becoming depleted or enmeshed in a weakness-enabling dynamic.

Self-evaluation

Now, you might want to evaluate yourself. Here are some questions to help. Are you becoming appreciatively more knowledgeable of yourself and your many miraculous workings and, therefore, more healthfully inner-connected? Are you good at nurturing yourself and, therefore, helping your further growth and development? Are you sufficiently self-protective and safeguarding of your well-being?

When you are sick, or wounded or in any other way afflicted physically or emotionally do you act sufficiently for your own self-healing? Are you joyous about yourself and the bundle of miracles that you are and, therefore, are self-rewarding enough? Are you helping those you love and care about grow to where they can answer the above questions in the affirmative for themselves?

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question
When you were growing up how much were you perhaps taught to regard self-love as a bad thing to be avoided and if you were so taught does that teaching make you a weaker person today? For help with this see the entry “Loving Others “as” You Love Yourself ???”.

Work With and Without Love

Synopsis: Intriguing concepts; Successful failure; Sacrifice and imbalance, Four factors most don’t know to think about; Healthy self-love; and Asking good questions for happy, healthy, work success via love.

How do these ideas strike you? 1. Work is to serve life, not life to serve work.
2. To love your work and work your love is to make much of life ‘play’.
3. The best work is ‘love made manifest’.
4. One of the healthiest acts of self-love is to find work that you would pay to do if someone wasn’t paying you to do it.
5. With work, love and play in balance we succeed at life. Without all three in balance we fail at life.

Harlan told me his story which, sad to say, I’d often heard before. His version went like this. “I did what my upbringing taught me to do. I put almost all my time and effort into succeeding in business. To accomplish this success I put my wife and kids ‘on the shelf’, so to speak. I thought I would get back to them once I had climbed high enough on the ladder of success and made enough money. I lied to myself saying I was doing it all for my loved ones. The trouble was my loved ones did not stay on the shelf. "My wife ran off with a guy who doesn’t even make half of what I do. My kids treat me like the stranger I am to them, and I only have business friends or, in other words, no real friends at all. I enjoyed my business success so much I neglected learning how to enjoy the rest of life. Now I am rich in money and status but concerning love and joy I live in poverty. Please help me.”

Well of course, I and those who work with me went to work helping Harlan learn to help himself in all his neglected areas. After some rather intense therapy and a lot of ‘practice work’ putting concepts and realizations into healthy actions I’m pleased to say Harlan now lives a much more balanced and far happier life.

Work is such an enormous part of most people’s life. Work is also an enormously important factor influencing how well one does healthy self-love and healthy relational love. Yet many people do not give these aspects of their work-life much thought. There are those who sacrifice their emotional and their relational life for work. There also are those who sacrifice their physical health for their work. Some people actually do work themselves to death. Like Harlan there are many people who, perhaps unknowingly, sacrifice their love relationships for success, money, status and other work related goals. There also are work related problems that sabotage love which hardly anyone thinks about.

Here are just four:
*    Succeeding at the wrong thing Here are some examples: Dean is a very well-off, successful, corporate attorney but he longs to be a camp director – he loved scouting as a boy. He dreams of this almost nightly and his anti-depression medicine seems to be working less and less. Janet just wants to raise her kids which is what she both loves and is super good at. However, being a high dollar, traveling, medical equipment rep just has too many payoffs, even though it takes her away from her family for weeks at a time. Next year John swears he’s going to stop selling real estate and start back to school to become a veterinarian, but will he? This is the fourth year he has made this proclamation.

Sarah is a rising project manager in an upscale, big-city, healthcare company but her doodles and daydreams are all about being back on a Navajo reservation working with children where her life felt most fulfilled. Each of these people do not love their work even though they are good at it. Sadly, they are more likely than the average person to develop stress related illnesses, damaging alcohol or prescription drug abuse, love relationship deterioration, and an existential crisis resulting in what most people call a complete breakdown. Hopefully none of those will happen. Each of these people just may live unfulfilled, unhappy lives being successful at the wrong occupation.

*    Loving only work It’s wonderfully healthful to love your work, enjoy your labors, revel in succeeding, be passionate about the challenges and so forth but only if you balance it with other things to love like healthy self-love, healthy relationship love, healthy love of life, healthy spiritual love, etc.. There is much more to life than work, even highly meaningful work. People working for important causes, people manifesting their talents in the arts, professions, etc., people doing fascinating research into the great mysteries, and people just enjoying doing a really good job at something they are good at — all can be in danger of imbalanced living because their work is so rewarding and enjoyable.

*    Only tolerating your work Do you ‘love’ your work? If you don’t do you suspect you ever will? Many people will leave a job or occupation they hate but will stay in a vocational situation they only can tolerate. This often is referred to as being “stuck in a dead-end job”. It is true that a great many people’s life situation does not provide for much more than a vocational situation which is merely tolerable. However, as an act of healthy self-love searching for better than that and risking a change can mean you will have a longer and happier life, and everybody you love and care about probably will enjoy you more.

It’s always a joy when I get to help a person find the kind of work for which they can get decent pay and be passionate about. It’s surprising how often this leads to improved financial success. I once helped a couple who had been saving for years to change occupations from being well-paid engineers to metal sculptors but they just were not brave enough to make the transition. Finally they worked up their courage to go ahead and become ‘starving artists’ devoted to their passion. However, it didn’t pan out that way because in their second year they were making twice as much money with their art as they ever had in engineering. Sometimes it works out like this and sometimes not, but usually the life happiness level is greatly improved.

*    Poor self-love makes for a lousy work life Let me suggest that people who are high in healthy self-love tend to manifest that self-love partly by going after work that actualizes their talents and in which they find enjoyment or even great enjoyment. Conversely, people with poor self-love and its accompanying low self-esteem and low self-confidence often put up with low satisfaction types of work and less than desirable work settings.

People with high, healthy self-love know they are worthy of good treatment and they won’t tolerate for long people or conditions that are too negative for them. Those who grow a healthier self love seem, almost invariably, to keep making work-life improvements of one kind or another. People weak in self-love are seldom proud of the work they do even when they do a pretty good or better job at it and often they don’t go after promotions or improved placement. At least that is my experience with the many people I have counseled concerning these issues.

Let’s look at some questions concerning love and work. For you, are love and work two different things or are they integrated? Do you put love into your work? Do you love yourself through your work? Do you love the people you work with? Does the way you go about work influence the way you go about love away from work? Does the way you go about love influence the way you go about work?

Now look at a bigger question. Are you succeeding at the big three i.e. Work, Love and Play?    Are you keeping the big three in a fair amount of balance with each other? Will it be good for you to give some thought to your work and its influence on your healthy self-love and on your love relationships? Hopefully this will help you examine the enormous part of life we call work.

As always – Grow and Go in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Does the word ‘work’ elicit an emotion in you that you like to feel, or an emotion you don’t like to feel, or a neutral feeling, and what do you suppose that means about you?

Do You Start and Part with Love?

How do you do ‘Hi’s’ and ‘Bye’s’ with those you love? To keep a love relationship healthy it is best if every (yes every) ‘Hello’ and ‘Goodbye’ experience includes at least a brief love connecting and sharing experience. Every “Hello, I’m home” event is best done with a hug, a pat, a caress, a nuzzle or a kiss. Going past each other to whatever you want to get to next without any expression of connecting love can be detrimental to your love relationships. Likewise, every “So long” is better done with similar brief expressions of love.

In some relationships the lack of such love when parting can lead to hours of vague anxiety, worrying “is anything wrong”. Starting off time together with a little demonstration of love means that the following time is more likely to go well. Ending a time together with expressed and received love actions makes your next encounter more likely to be a bit sooner, a bit better and a bit more wanted. People who start and part with love are seen as having better attitudes, better cooperation likelihood, less stress and a host of other small but significant benefits.

Many couples and many families I see in counseling for reasons of deteriorating relationships have not been greeting each other or saying goodbye to each other with any love at all. Sometimes there is no greeting or saying goodbye what so ever. Often when I get them to experiment with a little ‘start and part’ love action improvement begins. This is one of the simplest and quickest ways to start toward the repair, or enhancement, of a love relationship. Notice that this is the way most pet dogs (who were put in the world to teach us love according to an old Indian legend) do it. Actually many apparently love- connected mammals greet and part with what looks like shows of affection. So maybe love starting and parting is natural.

It is not only failing love relationships that often lack this love expression ‘start and part’ behavior. ‘Blah’ and ‘in a rut’ stagnant, and semi-functional relationships frequently exhibit this lack of love ‘start and part’ way of doing things. So, I would like to suggest you check out how well your love shows in ‘start and part’ situations. Might you do well to greet your spouse, children, friends, and maybe even yourself with an improved, more love demonstrative ‘start and part’ set of actions? Would you like to dedicate yourself to starting every encounter with a brief but sincere show of love?

Be sure to do that before you try to take care of anything else each time you encounter a loved one even if you have been away from them only for a brief amount of time. When coming together after work, going to the store , visiting with others, etc. making some action to lovingly touch, saying words of love followed by asking “How are you feeling” delivered with a loving tone of voice and loving facial expressions are usual ways to create a pleasant and caring environment.

Coming in from outside while saying a term of endearment like “Hello, Sweetheart”, giving a good morning kiss upon waking, smiling at first sight of one another, and adding a caress or pat are also quite helpful. Departing with similar sentiments and behaviors works in much the same way. If you already do these sort of things ask yourself how can you improve? If you don’t already do this sort of ‘start and part’ love might you want to dedicate yourself to making a plan to do so, and enacting it?

If when coming together you usually begin with some sort of practical ‘what’s to be done’ talk, or ‘what has been done’ inquiry a sense of low grade aggravation is likely to grow. If the last thing said on departure is something like “Remember to mail the letter, pickup the cleaning, do your homework”, etc. that person’s return to you is less likely to be happy.

If the last thing said is a message of love the reverse is true. Get the practical messages said but end with an expression of love. If the first thing said upon coming together is “Did you remember to pay the bills, do your assignment, call so-and-so”, etc. a small dose of subconscious emotional abrasion may occur. That abrasion experience could later lead to growing difficulty, or at least to fairly strong disappointment. If instead a happy “Hello, darling, it’s so good to be with you”, or something like that, starts a new encounter with each other it is much more likely to go smoothly. Usually it only takes 20 seconds or less to start or part lovingly. The return on your loving effort can yield hours of happier time together. Of course you can take longer than 20 seconds and do it even better if you want to.

If you are the recipient of loving ‘start and part’ behaviors do you soak them up, reciprocate in kind, and cycle the love being offered? Ignoring, or quickly moving away from such tokens of love deprives yourself and your loved one from the healthy, positive effects of these small important actions. Unfortunately, in our fast paced, often goal oriented and impersonal daily lives there is an insufficiency of loving behaviors, so savoring those love actions that do come your way can enrich your life.

A good love relationship takes good love teamwork. Good teamwork love takes good sending and good receiving. Being a good receiver and an equal participant when a loved one initiates a ‘start or part’ love action helps the process of good teamwork love quite a lot. So, if a love ‘start or part’ action comes your way take it in and send some back.

People sometimes say to me things like, “Dr. Cookerly, doesn’t starting and parting with love get to be an empty habit or meaningless activity”? It can if you let it but it doesn’t have to. Be creative! Also all around the world friendly, affectionate greeting and parting rituals make life work better. It’s healthy for those in all loving relationships to develop their own, informal love rituals. If you get a sense that your rituals are beginning to feel empty or meaningless that might be a message from your inner wisdom-filled subconscious to do them better.

So, here’s a simple challenge. Make an experimental ‘start and part’ with more behaviors of love action plan, and carry it out. Then see if you and those you care about like the results.

As always – grow in love!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

How To Make Love Improvements Permanent

Synopsis: Decision to make a love improvement, The usual human pattern, 7 ways to enhance getting your love improvement to be permanent, A ‘Love Success Question’ to play with.

Suppose you decide to make an improvement in the way you show your love. Or maybe you make a decision to respond to a loved one in a more loving way. Possibly you vow to yourself that you’re going to respond better to your loved ones in situations that are difficult. Then you forget, and don’t do what you decided you were going to do to make your love relationship improve. That’s human! Old habit patterns tend to overwhelm new decisions unless you add some other things to your decisions. Don’t be discouraged. There are ways to make your decisions for love improvements into lasting reality.

Let’s understand a few things about human improvement. For making an important behavioral change it usually takes from three to six months to make any new behavior permanent according to some of the psychologists who research this sort of thing. The usual pattern involves a decision to improve, some action to effect the improvement, forgetting to do that action, recommitment, forgetting again, recommitment again, getting it right some more, forgetting some more, then doing the improvement a lot more, forgetting less, then getting it right most of the time, then only rarely forgetting again and finally you’re doing the improvement automatically and consistently. Even so, once in a great while you might slip. That’s what’s involved in the way many humans go about making love relationship improvements. This may seem a bit arduous but the improvements and the joys these improvements bring, and the troubles they bypass, make it definitely worthwhile.

Remember that in love, like so many other things, you’re either going up or you’re going down. The wisdom of the love sages of the world tells us there is no standing still without stagnation as a result. Stagnation leads to deterioration which leads to death. So, the hard love message seems to be we are either working to improve and grow our love relationships upward or we are drifting downward toward love relationship dysfunction and perhaps ruin. The good news is love improvements get great results and get to be a lot of fun.

Here are seven things you can do to make the process of creating lasting love improvements easier and quicker:
1. When you fail to act in ‘the more loving way’ you had decided to act, don’t beat up on yourself or put yourself down. That just works to discourage, de-energize and defeat yourself. Instead just RECOMMIT. Remember the sport’s adages “You can’t win them all, or win them all all of the time” and “Never play strike one, I’m out, and the game is over”. Know that those who succeed are those who fail and don’t give up. The old Scout law teaches “…defeat does not down him (or her)” the true victor.

2. Don’t just try to ‘stop doing’ any negative, unloving, non-loving or anti-loving behavior. Stopping an action is a whole lot harder than REPLACING AN ACTION WITH A NEW BEHAVIOR. Old habits tend to prevail until you program in their replacement habit. “I’m going to stop yelling” does not work as well as “I’m going to talk softly”.

3. Make your new love improvements BEHAVIORALLY OBSERVABLE. It does not work very well to decide to ‘be more affectionate’ unless you add the observable behaviors of “I’m going to hug three times a day, cuddle at night and hold hands when we go to the movies”. These are observable, exact behaviors. While affection is a good concept it’s too broad and abstract by itself to help most people actually change.

4. Keep a DAILY CALENDAR record for at least a month, recording your efforts to improve. Every day you act to demonstrate your love as you have decided to do, draw a ♥ or make a on your calendar. Every day you don’t do what you could have done draw some other symbol. Keep working to get more hearts or :-)’s than marks indicating you ‘missed’.

5. TELL ONE OR MORE PEOPLE who care about you what you’re doing to make a love improvement. Ask them to ask you how you’re succeeding every so often. Also ask them to celebrate your victories, and say supportive things when you miss your goals. You, of course, can offer to do the same for them.

6. REWARD YOURSELF the first, third, fifth, seventh and 10th times you accomplish your chosen love improvement action. Then erratically keep rewarding yourself every so often. Rewards can be anything from self praise, to buying yourself a present, or giving yourself a special experience. Getting your loved ones to help you with rewards also is a good idea. Rewarded behavior continues and establishes new habits far faster than unrewarded actions. A rewarding approach often tends to be as much as seven times more effective than a punishment approach.

7. Every so often REMIND YOURSELF that by improving your love actions you are likely acting to improve the health, happiness and all over well-being of not only those you love but also yourself. Medical research has shown that giving love improves the biochemistry of the giver as well as the recipient in a surprising number of very important healthful ways.

There are lots of other ways to work on making love improvements ‘lasting’ or ‘permanent’ but these seven, if you apply yourself, are likely to help quite a bit.

As always – Go and Grow with Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question What will be your effect on your loved ones and on yourself if you DON’T work to improve your ways of demonstrating your love and interacting with love?

Intercourse Absent Lovemaking - a Love Skill

Synopsis: This mini-love skill lesson explorers the puzzle of sex without sex?; the great world of sexual variety for the loving; intercourse dependency; why have sex without intercourse; how do we start moving beyond intercourse dependency with a sample scenario; and a bit about fixing sexual intercourse problems:more.

Sex Without Sex?

Sex without sexual intercourse is almost unthinkable to some people. When you say the word sex a whole bunch of people think sexual intercourse is what you mean. Having sex, doing sex, making love and a hundred other phrases mean, to them, having sexual intercourse.

The truth is there are a lot of people having a lot of great sex and no sexual intercourse is going on. Quite often there also is a great deal of healthy, real love happening, the intensity of the erotic experience is fantastic and yet there is no ‘penis in vagina’ sex happening.

The Great World of Sexual Variety for The Loving

For some people sex without intercourse is seen as a necessity. For others it is seen as being preferable at least some of the time. For a lot of people who really love each other sexual intercourse is kind of incidental so long as there is good, love-filled, emotional intercourse. There is another group who somewhat crudely say “who cares how you get to come, just so you do”. Then again, some proclaim there is so much more to sexuality than intercourse or climaxing they can do without both so long as they get to do all the rest with someone they really love and who loves them.

People who love each other ‘through and with’ their sexuality often tend toward engaging in a wide variety of different, erotic experiences with each other. The more different things they do together the less they become what some call ‘intercourse dependent’.

Intercourse Dependency

Quite a lot of males protest things like “I just have to be in her. In fact I’m driven to get in her again and again, that’s just the way I’m built. I’ve got to feel that ‘inside her’ feeling and nothing else will do”. No small number of females declare things like “having a man inside me is what makes me feel feminine and like a real woman. I have to have that more than anything, even more than an orgasm”.
Others deeply and strongly want to have the “in” experience coupled with feeling their lover climax while “in”. This is all likely to be quite natural and maybe genetic. However, some people let this drive toward intercourse and/or climax in intercourse narrow their sexuality. They’re sort of like the people who have to have meat at every meal or the don’t feel like they’ve eaten well.

There are those who are religiously trained that it is wrong to do anything but intercourse and so their sexuality has been unnaturally narrowed by outside forces. From a health perspective behavioral variety is a good thing in almost everything humans do, sexuality included. When humans have too much sameness in just about anything they tend1 to give up on it because humans are the creature that seeks variety more than any other. Therefore, exploring for the wide variety of ways sexuality can be practiced outside of intercourse can be a healthy, enriching experience.

There are the millions who prefer oral-genital sexuality which some think of as a form of oral intercourse. There are men and women who are more desirous of anal intercourse than they are vaginal. A fair number of women enjoy and even prefer dildos and other intercourse toys. There are quite a few people who don’t care which kind of intercourse is occurring, or whether or not there’s any intercourse, just as long as what’s happening is very loving. Along with oral, anal or vaginal intercourse some people also need to hear sexy words and see sexy looks, or they combine their intercourse with various “kinky” actions. Plain intercourse usually is not high on their priority list, though they can be quite intercourse involved.

Why Have Sex Without Intercourse?

Do you wonder why some people have and even strongly desire to have sex without intercourse? One reason is to develop all one’s other loving sex skills. Lots of couples who resist or abstain from having intercourse discover that they develop many other ways to excite and pleasure each other. Some say intercourse-dependency deprives people of all the better things there are to do sexually with each another. They say too much focus on intercourse makes for a rather limited sex life. By not doing intercourse for a while other things often are explored, discovered and developed. Thus, a much broader range of experience can be shared which often is a major joy in a loving couple’s life together.

There are a larger number than you might think of people who don’t participate in sexual intercourse for religious reasons, but ‘do everything else’. These fall into three groups. One is the group who has been religiously taught not to have intercourse unless it is to procreate – have a baby. Another group it’s because they have been taught that they are still virgins if they don’t have male-female, vaginal intercourse, even though they might do everything else imaginable. Then there is the group who has been taught that only male-female sexual intercourse is sanctified (especially in marriage), and they are in religious rebellion attempting to break out of and away from their faith’s restrictive dogma, so they might do everything except sanctioned sexual intercourse.

Very large numbers of people do not engage in sexual intercourse because of medical reasons. Sadly, some of those have just given up on sex when they don’t have to. Sometimes they have given up because they are indeed intercourse dependent in the way they go about taking care of their natural, sexuality, and they are unaware or inexperienced in the many ways sexuality can be expressed. They can learn that, in spite of injuries, illnesses and various other hampering or debilitating medical conditions that limit or prohibit sexual intercourse, they can have a great life of love-filled sexuality. Even paraplegic and quadriplegic people can have a sex life, and treatment programs exist for accomplishing exactly that.

How Do People Have Great Sex Without Intercourse?

There are lots of ways people can have a great sex life without sexual intercourse or with only occasional sexual intercourse? Some couples simultaneously masturbate each other, and some do side-by-side parallel masturbation while talking sexy to each other, or watching each other, or watching films. Some take turns as giver and as receiver teasing, tempting and pleasuring each other sometimes applying oils, powders, feathers, toys, vibrators and other stimulating actions and devices all over each other’s bodies.

Those people who have to spend time away from each other can do ‘Skype sex’ where they can watch each other do sexually stimulating things (according to company policies this is not supposed to be done, but often is). Some couples watch the same sex video at the same time, though they are thousands of miles apart, while they talk to each other on the phone. Of course, millions do ‘phone sex’ with their beloved on a regular basis while apart.

An amazingly large number of people, especially females, are sending naked and otherwise sexy pictures of themselves to their lovers as stimulating love gifts, and then delighting in hearing about what their lover did while looking at the pictures. Oral sex, anal sex, spanking, B&D, S&M, D&H, Tantric sacred sex meditation exercises, mud pit sex, second life avatar with love partner avatar sex on the Internet, all sorts of role-playing, sharing porn sex, etc. – why the list goes on and on.

Not all these ways are pleasing to all people but choosing the ones that are can help loving couples share fantastic sex lives together without sexual intercourse. For couples for whom intercourse is painful, somehow physically dangerous, ill-advised or impossible many of these ways are used and make available sexual alternatives which can show each other intimate, personal love and can make available loving, sexual adventures together.

What Does It Take for Couples to Have a Sex Life
Not Overly Based on Intercourse?

Usually it takes a very love-centered relationship where tolerance, acceptance and a “whatever works” attitude prevails. It also takes being able to be lovingly open to experiments and explorations of lots of varying sexual behaviors. Happy, shared, excited, anticipation, curiosity and a sense of joyful sharing in each other’s erotic, adventuring feelings also are great additions.

An important consideration backing up all these actions and adventures often has to be a sense of being able to (if needed) to take small steps, pause, back up or totally escape any sexual exploration with full, loving support from one’s lover. Frequently a sense of strong support and protection of one another in each and every sexual experiment or adventure must be readily available for people to be able to move forward together.

When lovers fear their beloved may be critical, disappointed, disparaging , judgmental, angry, prudish or any other relationally negative process, it becomes quite difficult if not impossible for couples to sexually progress. Also there has to be a sort of “we can try that again later” understanding. No one wins by playing the destructive, psychological game known as ‘strike one, we are out and our game is over’.

How Do We Start Moving Beyond Intercourse Dependency

One way is to do a homework exercises that I sometimes assign which seems to work for a lot of couples. It starts with a trip to a good bookstore and going to the sexuality section. There a couple often can read and look at beautiful, erotic pictures portraying many of the different ways people can and do go about sex, with and without sexual intercourse.

It’s important to talk together about whatever grabs your attention, gets you interested or piques your curiosity. You might want to take a book or two home, then share going deeper into the books with one another. After that I suggest giving each other a full, very light touch, naked, all parts of the body massage with intercourse absolutely prohibited.

Following that you can begin to take little, mental, sexual adventurers like sharing some sex fantasy and maybe do a little role-playing. There are more advanced ways to progress to sexual intercourse-absent sexuality, and then even much more advanced ways. If you’re up for it you might attend a Tantric, Shakti or Taoist spiritual sex practices weekend workshop which many couples proclaim as the most amazing and productive way to maximize a couple’s sexual love together.

Sample Scenario

One couple followed this scenario. Shy Sarah whispered, “I will go skinny dipping if you will, but it has to be dark and no intercourse.” Timid Tim agreed, and it turned out to be incredibly exciting. Then timid Tim said, “Let’s make out in the back seat of our old station wagon, and so they laughed and giggled while they kissed and fondled for hours. Sarah, no longer quite so shy, had read about couples doing nude meditation together which they did and quite a few wide-ranging, new and intriguing feelings enveloped both of them.

Later Tim, less and less timid, brought home a sexy movie and side-by-side they played with each others genitals as they watched it, driving them into passions they never knew existed before. Even later their ecstasy soared when Sarah said to Tim, “Tease, tempt and lightly ‘torture’ me for the rest of the night.” Tim quite enthusiastically obliged, although because of blissful exhaustion they didn’t make it all through the night.

Of course, some days later Tim came with chocolate syrup and did all manner of erotic oral things to and with Sarah. Together they visited a sex shop and came home with a variety of toys plus a great eagerness to learn how to play with them. Those were the beginning practices that went into shy Sarah and timid Tim building a love filled, not intercourse dependent, sex life.

Fixing Intercourse Problems

Couples who have sexual intercourse problems can do all the above, while working on whatever difficulties they might have concerning sexual intercourse itself. If you have problems with intercourse, or getting started in the above described areas, come to talk to one of us who have received the additional training it takes to develop expertise in sex therapy. We’ll be glad to help you.

As always – Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question If you’re going to get into a sexy, new practices or actions with your beloved what would you really like them to be? Do they include a healthy dose of love?

Pro-Love and Anti-Love Talking

Is your way of talking to your loved ones (mate, children, siblings, etc.) more pro-love or more anti-love?

Have you ever examined your habits of speech and speech style for their effect on your loved ones? Do you know the three big factors determining pro-love and anti-love talking effects?

Factor I    Love Destroyer Words versus Love Builder Words
Below you will find 25 examples of words and phrases which tend to have an anti-love effect. Following each of these is an example of a pro-love effective way to state a similar thing. Check your speech habits against these to determine if perhaps you are using love destroyer words and phrases and might need to practice a more pro-love style to have a love building effect through words and phrases.

1.    You should …
You could …
2.    You shouldn’t …
I would like you not to …
3.    You always …
I’d like that to happen less …
4.    You never …
Really soon I really would like you to …
5.    Why don’t you ever …
I want you to ………………, maybe by tomorrow if that’s OK?
6.    You’re wrong.
I see that differently.
7.    You’re lying. That’s absolutely not the way it happened.
We remember that differently.
8.    How could you have been so stupid!
In the future I really want you to do that better.
9.    Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again!
How can I help you not to do that again?
10. You’re terrible!
You can improve!
11. I hate you!
Right now I’m really mad at you.
12. You’re an idiot!
Part of me would really like to call you a lot of names right now.
13. I can’t stand you!
I’m having trouble dealing with you right now, so let’s take a break.
14. Why did you do such an awful thing?
Let’s look at what we can do to improve that.
15. I can’t love you when you act that way.
I always love you, and what you’re doing really upsets me.
16. But …
And …
17. Never say that again!
I don’t want to censor you so can we talk about that later and nicer?
18. I’ve asked you time and again, so when are you going do what I say!
Honey, so that you’re clear, this is not a request, it’s something I have to insist on.
19. You crazy freak! Don’t you know any better than that!
In some ways we are really different.
20. Can’t you ever get it right!
Sweetheart, we don’t seem to be making progress in this area.
21. That’s all your fault!
Honey, how can we learn to go about that differently?
22. I blame you for that, and you know you deserve it!
The critical part of me really wants to lay a guilt trip on you for that.
23. No, not ever, and that’s final!
Sweetheart, right now I am firmly against that so please bear with me and be tolerant.
24. We are never going to …
So far we haven’t and I really want us to, so this time how can we get to it?
25. If you really loved me you’d know what I need and you would have done it already!
I probably have not made a clear enough request so let me see if I can be specific
and tell you more exactly what I want.

Factor II    Destroyer Voice Tones versus Love Builder Voice Tones
Did you know that 35 to 37% of what you are communicating in a personal interaction is delivered by your voice tones? Have you given much thought to what your voice sounds are telling your loved ones when you talk to them? Below are 10 words describing voice tones which frequently tend to have an anti-love effect and 10 words describing voice sounds that might have a more love positive effect.

Check and see which you think are most common to your own voice tone expressions:
1. Indifferent    2. Businesslike    3. Bored    4. Harsh    5. Unfriendly
     Interested         Personal              Intrigued    Gentle        Friendly
6. Hard    7. Mean    8. Condescending    9.Condemning     10. Angry
     Soft          Kind           Respectful               Forgiving          Understanding

Factor III    Pro Love and Anti-Love Face and Body Communication
Did you know that in person-to-person talk it is not unusual for as much as 55% of the value of what is being communicated to be carried by face and body language factors? Did you know that in a person-to-person talk your subconscious mind may be interpreting as much as 300 bits of information per minute having to do with face and body language communication? Have you given much thought to what you’re face and body language messages are to your loved ones? Here are 10 words that can be used to describe face and body language expressions which can have an anti-love effect. Under each of these words is another word for a face and body language expression which might have a more pro-love effect.

1. Uncaring       2. Judgmental    3. Rejecting       4. Bland        5. Egotistical
     Caring               Forgiving             Accepting            Involved        Sharing
6. Tough    7. Superior    8. Irritated    9. Impatient     10. Prudish              Tender            Democratic      Tranquil         Patient                Flirtatious

Now we suggest you examine what your own, more frequent face and body communications are when you are talking with your loved ones. Then examine your voice tone communications and see how you might improve them. After that take a look at the words you are commonly using and see if you want to make some changes so that you can have a greater love-positive effect. You also might want to lovingly ask a loved one to follow your example and do the same.

As always, Go and Grow in Love

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

♥ Love Success Question Will you ask one, two or three people who know you pretty well what is the best and the worst or how you come across in regard to the above 3 Factors?

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Image credits: “[last remnants of autumn]” image by Flickr user lempel_ziv (Tanya Zagumenov) .
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Over 300 FREE mini-love-lessons touching the lives of thousands in over 190 countries worldwide!

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: This mini-love-lesson starts with a review of some of the many troubling contradictions and confusions that exist about whether feeling love is a feeling or not; the lesson then posits a clarifying and for some a contentious answer to the beginning question; more.

Contradictions And Confusions

The Perception of Love

Accessing Love

Love Labeling

Evidence That Love Is More Than Emotion

The Answer

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: Self-love dynamics and importance; the five functions via healthy self-love; living with and without functioning healthy self-love; a healthy self-love self exam.

Dynamics and Importance

Self-Love and the Five Major Functions of Healthy Real Love

Rewards, Survival and Well-Being

Loveless Malfunction

Greater Self-Love : Better Everything

Self-evaluation

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: Intriguing concepts; Successful failure; Sacrifice and imbalance, Four factors most don’t know to think about; Healthy self-love; and Asking good questions for happy, healthy, work success via love.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Synopsis: Decision to make a love improvement, The usual human pattern, 7 ways to enhance getting your love improvement to be permanent, A ‘Love Success Question’ to play with.

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Sex Without Sex?

The Great World of Sexual Variety for The Loving

Intercourse Dependency

Why Have Sex Without Intercourse?

How Do People Have Great Sex Without Intercourse?

What Does It Take for Couples to Have a Sex Life Not Overly Based on Intercourse?

How Do We Start Moving Beyond Intercourse Dependency

Sample Scenario

Fixing Intercourse Problems

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

Dr. J. Richard Cookerly

What Does It Take for Couples to Have a Sex Life
Not Overly Based on Intercourse?